


More Than Need

by BurningTea



Series: Missing You [1]
Category: Leverage
Genre: Eliot being cared for, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Night-time snuggles, Panic Attacks, Parker sees the puzzle pieces
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-08-08 08:16:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7750213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurningTea/pseuds/BurningTea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aimee doesn't know why Eliot has appeared at her place, or why he won't talk about his crew, but she can see that he's hurting. With her dad sick, she's hurting, too. They find ways to comfort each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	More Than Need

**Author's Note:**

> [tidal_race](http://archiveofourown.org/users/tidal_race/pseuds/tidal_race) gave me the prompt of one character breaking down crying at 3pm and the other waking with a panic attack at 3am. She also beta'd this fic, which is my first ever full beta. :) Many thanks.

Eliot shows up out of the blue, giving about as much warning as he used to, and Aimee doesn’t have it in her to turn him away.

Hell, with the shape her dad’s in lately, having Eliot around to help out could be a blessing. A blessing in disguise, maybe, what with how every time she catches sight of him she remembers that last time in the stables, and she remembers the times she waited for him and the times he didn’t come back, and remembers the haunted look in his eyes when she opened her door and found him standing there this time. But still, a blessing. 

Those are hard to come by, so she grabs what she can of it and tries not to over-think it. She hasn’t got time for that.

“It’s not up to you to keep the place going by yourself,” her dad tells her when she visits him in hospital. But of course it is. There’s no one else, that’s for damn sure. Her mom’s long gone, her brother and sisters are too far away, with lives of their own. Kids and jobs.

And things won’t run on their own, even with the help they hired after getting Baltimore back and the ‘insurance’ pay-out allowed them to expand. The horses won’t train themselves, race season won’t wait, and the bills need paying. She can’t let the place her dad has worked so hard on go under because she can’t pick up the slack.

“At least let me help,” Eliot tells her, the third day he’s back from whatever has him running. “You’ll end up in the bed next to him if you keep on like this.”

“Well, now, that ain’t gonna happen,” Aimee tells him, throwing the dishcloth back into the sink and turning to check she’s put away everything from their meal. “And why are you walking around? You think I can’t see you’re injured?”

Eliot scowls, and doesn’t answer that. He doesn’t have to.

Aimee has years and years of watching Eliot behind her, both when they were kids together and after. She can see in the way he moves that he’s hurting. 

That family of his, the one she could see he’d pledged himself to, hasn’t been mentioned, and she hopes to God he hasn’t lost them. She knows there’s no point asking him outright about that. He won’t tell her any more now than he did the sixth, or the tenth, or the twelfth time he came back.  
She sighs. Eliot always has needed to be useful, to show with his hands and his body what he can’t bring himself to say with his words.

“I guess I could do with some help around the place, if you’ve got the time.”

His eyes meet hers and there’s relief, she swears. A purpose, that’s what Eliot needs. He’s always needed a purpose. 

“I’ve got time,” he says, and that’s all they say about that.

**********************

It’s the second week when she finds him sitting up in the hayloft, drinking a beer and staring at nothing. He doesn’t seem especially pleased with the quality of the nothing.

“Hey,” she says. “You need anything?”

For a moment, she thinks he might actually answer, that Eliot Spencer might actually admit that something’s wrong. Instead, the moment passes with a press of his lips and a shake of his head that has his hair falling in his face.

“Then, do you mind if I sit awhile?” she asks, pulling herself up the rest of the way. “I could do with a break.”

In response, Eliot pats the hay-bale next to him her, and she settles on the spot. They don’t say anything else, but after a while Aimee finds herself leaning sideways, and Eliot doesn’t protest or move away when she rests her head on his shoulder and stares at nothing with him. 

***********************

Four days later, she gets a letter demanding immediate payment she doesn’t have. The letter’s barely read when Matty comes running up yelling about some broken equipment, and he’s not even done telling her about it when a truck’s tire blows out as it’s pulling into the yard.

“Hey, Aimee?” Anne calls from the office, hanging out of the door with a phone in her hand, “You got time to take this? It’s the blacksmith.”

Another bill she needs to sort out.

She can get the money. She can. It’s just that it’s tied up in investments and she’s been trying to hold out for the boarding payments to come in, and she’s good, but her daddy and her normally run the place between them and she just knows the insurance isn’t going to pay all the medical bills, and why can’t she have five goddamn minutes without something exploding or breaking or needing paying?

It’s a hot day. Muggy. Must be why her breath’s catching in her throat. Hell, in her chest. Must be why her eyes are damp, too, and it accounts for that spinning in her head.

She just needs a minute to breathe. Just for a minute. One fucking minute of quiet. 

“Aimee?” Anne says, from much closer.

And Aimee waves her off, turns away.

“I’m fine,” she says, angry that just saying it can’t make it true. “Tell him I’ll deal with it, all. I just need a minute.”

She’s going to cry. She knows she is. And she isn’t upset. They won’t be those kind of tears.  
“He says he wants to talk to you, Aimes,” Anne says, hesitantly.

“Well, he isn’t going to get to talk to me!” Aimee snaps, clenching her fists and pressing one arm across her belly. She needs to hold herself in, hold herself steady. “Tell him I’ll call him back.”

There’s no way she can talk to anyone civilly right now. If the world won’t give her more than a second of peace she’s going to be the next thing to blow up. She’s in two minds about whether she wants to take the world with her. She’s seen people try to do business when they’re spitting mad, or when they’re an inch from bawling their eyes out, and it’s not the smart way to do anything. She bolts.

She makes it into the house and to the kitchen before she loses it, and feels the heat and pressure in her cheeks, in her eyes.

“Fuck,” she mutters, making it to for the sink just before the first tears spill out. 

Splashing cold water on her face won’t really solve anything. This isn’t her first rodeo, here. But it will cool her down a little, and it will make her feel she’s doing something, make her feel a little less helpless about it.

She ends up holding her hands under the water, feeling them chill and go numb and then feeling nothing at all where her hands are, and she cries. Sobs, really. Her breaths come ragged and gasping, and she feels her shoulders hunch at how ridiculous she feels.

Crying fixes nothing and she isn’t in danger, but her body’s thrumming with the need to run, or the need to hide, or the need to fight. She can’t, won’t run or hide and there’s nothing for her to fight except herself. 

“Aimee?”

This time, it’s a man’s voice, pitched soft and low. It’s a voice she’s gotten so used to hearing grumble and snap that she almost doesn’t recognize it at first. He came back in a bad mood, her Eliot.

“I’m fine,” she says.

This time, she’s the one who’s snapping.

“You think I’m gonna pretend to believe that?” Eliot asks, and is suddenly beside her.

He reaches over and turns off the faucet, taking hold of her hands and turning her so he can dry them. He rubs the droplets away with a towel and guides her to a seat at the kitchen table, directing her with touch as her tears keep falling.

She half expects him to sit and pull her into a hug, but instead she hears him move away, hears the stove being lit and water run, and when she’s more or less done with tears, at least for now, she looks up to see him making tea.

“Hey,” he says, when he sees her looking.

He always did have a warm smile, when he used it. Looks like it’s just as soft and warm as it ever was, even if he hasn’t used it since turning up.

Aimee sniffs and rubs the back of her hand under her nose.

“Tea?” she asks. “You think I have time for tea?”

“I think you’ll make time,” Eliot says, bringing her a cup and finally sitting down across from her. He has his own, and he wraps one hand around it, his fingers tapping at the edge. “You gotta let someone know if you’re drowning, Aimee,” he says. “You ain’t no good to anyone, you ain’t no good to your dad, if you let yourself go under.”

She feels her jaw tense and she knows her eyes must be red, that they’re puffy, but she manages a glare.

“You think telling me that’s helping?” she asks. “You think I need to worry more how I’m going to let him down?”

Eliot frowns.

“I didn’t say anything about you letting anyone down,” he says, carefully.

It’s a lot more careful than he was before, and Aimee wonders if it’s something he’s learned with his team, with his new family.

The thought abruptly irritates her, that he’ll adapt and accommodate them when he wouldn’t do that for her.

“Not like you buried the implication, Eliot,” she says. “You think I don’t know it’ll crush my dad if he loses this place? Hell, it’s come close before. And there ain’t no-one to blame this time. There ain’t no play you can run that’ll make this right. It’s cancer, Eliot. You can’t con cancer.”

“I know that,” he says, and sounds like he’s the one in pain.

He drops his gaze.

“And I can handle it,” she says, and wonders which one of them she’s trying to convince. “I can. It’s just…I just…”

Her throat still feels thick and tight and her chest feels like someone’s stuffed needles in it. She hates crying. She doesn’t want to start again.

“You need a bit of peace,” Eliot says. “To get it together again before you keep fighting. I get that.”

And looking at him sitting there, the stiffness in his body faded but the look in his eyes not much better than it was the day he turned up, Aimee thinks maybe he does.

Something in her eases and she picks up her tea.

“Well,” she says, “I guess I could do with your help changing a tire.”

***************************

It’s not the last time she needs a moment. It’s not the last time Eliot finds her and makes her tea. She has no idea where he’s getting the stuff from. Maybe he brought it with him.

She hasn’t been into the room she’s given him since he arrived, and she hasn’t seen any sign of the huge duffel he was carrying when he turned up. He’s been living in the same house as her, helping where she tells him to and being nearby when she has to retreat for a spell, but she knows he hasn’t come back to her. Not really.

Some part of him is elsewhere. Most of him. She isn’t sure how much of it’s with his new family, whatever might have happened there, and how much never made it back at all.

So she has Eliot under her roof, has his presence and his help, at least for now, but she doesn’t have him. Not really.

Some of that changes when she gets back from a visit with her dad to find Eliot in the kitchen with a full meal prepared. 

He shrugs off her attempts to tell him he didn’t need to, and orders her to wash up and get sat down.

He’s always been able to cook, but this is another level, and she decides perhaps she doesn’t need to take care of dinner every day as well as everything else.

“This is pretty good,” she says .

‘Pretty good’ doesn’t cover it, but this feels like a moment to step gently. 

Eliot nods like he expects her to like the food, but he’s always had that confidence in his capabilities. It’s always been one of the things she admires about him, that she’s found attractive.

“Thought it was about time I showed you some of what I’ve learned,” he says. And smiles.

It’s real, but there’s an edge to it. A sadness.

She lets her lips quirk up and huffs out a laugh.

“I’m sure you’ve learned all about fine foods and fancy art,” she says, because she thinks a little teasing might steer them away from whatever has that twist in his smile.

Instead, he blinks, breathes in, and sits back. The smile vanishes.

“Yeah,” he says, and she thinks it’s only because she knows him, knew him, so well that she hears the strain in it. “Dated a lot of people.”

He winks, but his right hand, resting on the table, is clenched in a fist.

“I’ll bet you have,” Aimee says, “but I’m still claiming bragging rights on teaching you some things first.”

His smile returns at that, and it reaches his eyes when she leans over to cover his closed fist with her hand. 

“Bragging rights?” he asks, after a beat where his gaze dips to their hands and back up. “And who exactly are you bragging to?”

“I don’t know,” Aimee says, aware that what they’re saying isn’t important. It’s the tone that matters, and the saying anything at all. “The horses don’t seem to care much. Maybe I’ll start a blog.”

“A blog? A damn bl-”

Eliot cuts himself off and she sees him struggle, just for an instant. Okay, so apparently blogs are an issue, and art. She doesn’t know how exactly all of this fits together. She thinks she might be able to guess, though.

She’s about to draw back, to squeeze his hand and let go, let this moment pass, when he gets hold of himself and moves, unclenching his fist and turning his hand so their fingers are intertwined. His thumb strokes over her knuckle.

“Your blog’s gonna be a bit out of date now, darlin’.”

He still drawls when he’s putting on the seductive, bit, then. Good to know. 

And she shouldn’t let herself be drawn in by it. She should laugh this off, a joke between two old friends who used to be something else. Having Eliot around is easier, in many ways, than she’d expected, but letting it go much further… It was never the having him around that was the hard part.

They had their last time, and said their piece, and moved on.

“Then I guess we’d best see what you can do now,” she says.

Which is the other option.

***********************

There are scars on Eliot that she doesn’t remember.

She finds them when she pushes him back on to her bed and kisses her way up his body, pushing the material of his shirt out of the way as she goes.

It’s far from the first time she’s done this, trailed up his body as she peels the layers of clothing away. It used to short-circuit something in his brain, and it seems that’s something that hasn’t changed, judging by the way he stops breathing for a second when her lips first touch the skin above his belt. He inhales sharply, and she feels him start to move before he seems to think better of it. She can’t help the grin that tugs at her lips at that. Seems he remembers he’s not allowed to touch yet. 

At the edge of her vision she sees him tip back his head and close his eyes. She finds herself hesitating over the deep scar that knots his skin above a lower rib. She has no idea what caused it, and knows whatever it was will be locked up tight in Eliot’s brain, where no-one can ever get at it. But here’s a hint, a clue she could trace with the pads of her fingers, if she chose to, that could tell her something of a man she knows everything and nothing about.

She feels his breath catch again, and glances up in time to see him push his hair back in a wave. When their eyes meet, he goes impossibly still, his hand in his hair and his eyes dark, as though he’s not sure what’s going to happen next.

Deliberately, slowly, she leans in and presses a kiss to the ridge of roughened skin. And moves on.

************************

She wakes up to darkness, abruptly alert as she registers an unfamiliar warm weight against her back.

Eliot.

She feels the edges of her lips curl up as she stretches and wriggles back to press herself even closer. His life may have given him scars, but it’s also given him a firm body that he knows damn well how to use, and seeing as she’s already thrown sense out the window, she might as well enjoy it while she can.

It takes a few moments for her to realize Eliot’s awake. At least, his breathing’s off.

If he is awake, he isn’t moving or showing any sign he know’s she is too.

“Eliot?” she asks.

That gets a reaction.

He rolls away from her, moving so swiftly she falls backwards into the space he just left, and she twists around to see him sitting on the edge of the bed, bowed forward, his head in his hands.

He’s not breathing right at all.

“Hey. Hey, it’s all right,” she says, moving to her knees behind him but not quite daring to touch. There’s something live-wire about him, something that makes her far warier than she would be with most people who were crying, and with the way he just reacted, she’s not sure he wouldn’t bolt out of the room completely

“Is there something I can do?” she asks, keeping her voice as low and soothing as she can manage.

He doesn’t respond at first, and she wonders if he’s somewhere else in his head, but after a stretch of silence in which she listens to him struggle to get a full breath, he closes his eyes and pushes his hair back with both hands.

“I should never have come here,” he says.

“Why did you?” she asks before she can stop herself, but trying not to let any hurt, any anger, show.

No-one made him come here and no-one made him stay. 

“Job went bad,” he says, sounding like he’s having to fight to get the words out.

Any anger she had is gone in an instant, just like when she saw the look in his eyes when he turned up on her doorstep. Her heart drops, her own breath feeling large and heavy in her throat until he gasps in more air and goes on.

“They got out. But it was too close. I didn’t do a good enough job, Aimes. I nearly lost them. And it would have been my fault. I didn’t… It would have been my fault.”

For people she’s only met once, the brief image of any of his crew hurt or dead is too painful to linger on, and not just because of what it would do to Eliot. She can’t imagine how it will feel if she loses her father. She swallows that ever present fear back down and focuses on what’s in front of her, on Eliot breaking.

“But you didn’t,” she says, hoping it’s what he needs to hear. “You didn’t lose them. You said they all got out, didn’t you? They’re all okay?”

Another thing she doesn’t ask: what kind of job? She has a shape in her mind of the kind of thing they do, but that doesn’t mean she really knows. She has no real idea what Eliot’s doing, out there in the world, other than the fact that it’s dangerous and probably illegal, and it’s the reason he’s in her bed having what she can only describe as a panic attack.

“They got out,” he says, still speaking between attempts to steady his breathing.

There’s a finality to that. It chills her. She wonders about the scar on his ribs. Pulling more of the blanket up around herself, she folds her arms across her chest. If she doesn’t do something with her hands, she might not be able to stop herself from reaching out to him.

“What can I do?” she tries again, hoping this time he’ll answer her.

She wants to pull him back into her arms and let him cry until there aren’t any tears left, but he’s still hiding his face from her and is all tense lines and desperation. She needs some sort of map, here, a trace of a path. Some kind of hint. He made her tea. It seems laughable that tea could fix anything right now, but she can’t think of anything else to do. That would mean leaving him alone, though, and that doesn’t seem right either.

“You shouldn’t have to deal with this,” he says, the words muffled by his forearms. “I shouldn’t have stayed in your bed.”

“Now, that’s just nonsense,” she says, certain of something for the first time in a long time. “How would it be any better if you were alone?”

He barks out a laugh and turns to face her. She’s hardly ever seen him cry, and she’s never seen him look like this. 

“You think this is the first time?” he asks. “Aimee, I could of hurt you. Does this look like control to you?”

“You think you’d, what? Hit me in my sleep?” she asks.

The blanket doesn’t seem like enough, now. She wishes she’d worn something to bed so she could move to sit next to him or in front of him without being naked or having to drag all of the bedding with her. Somehow, she knows if she goes to get dressed, she’ll never get him talking again.

“It happens,” Eliot tells her, as though he’s telling her sometimes horses kick people. Like it’s just one of those things. He presses the heel of one hand to his temple like he’s got a headache. “You got no idea what’s up in here. And you shouldn’t. But it can mess people up, leave ‘em thinking they’re fighting when they’re lying next to someone they…next to someone they care about. So I should never have let myself fall asleep here. Not when I’m like this.”

He isn’t saying they should have kept their hands, or the rest of their bodies, to themselves. There’s that, at least. It’s one of the only bright spots of Aimee’s last few months, and she’s relieved he isn’t regretting that part of it, even though she knows she can’t let it mean more, that it’s likely temporary, maybe even a one-time deal.

She still aches to help him, regardless. 

“You didn’t hurt me,” she says. “And now I know. It’s still my choice who I want in my bed.” 

She’ll need to think about this, but just now she needs to stay focused on Eliot, on what he might need. 

Shuffling a few inches closer on her knees, she lets go of the blanket and reaches for him with one hand, making sure he’s seen her. As her hand gets close to his face, he sighs and drops his own hands to his knees, leaning his cheek into her palm.

He’s clammy.

“What’s this about? Tell me how to help you.” Maybe the third time will be the charm.

“You shou-”

“And don’t you tell me it’s none of my concern, Eliot Spencer,” she says. “You think you’re the only one that gets to offer comfort? If you need me to make you some damn tea, then I’ll go do that. Doesn’t matter what it is. Just…tell me.”

He’s still having trouble breathing, and those are still tears in his eyes. 

“Can…can we lie back down?” he asks. “Can I just hold you?”

He still doesn’t tell her what’s running through his head, but she isn’t going to press, not when he’s finally asked for something, admitted out loud that there’s something he needs. 

“Sure,” she says. “We can do that.”

And if it’s really her that ends up holding him, his head resting under her chin and her fingers playing softly with his hair, that isn’t something they need to talk about, either.

*************************

Aimee wakes up the next time to daylight falling across the bed and a mug of coffee on the bedside table.

She also finds a note, telling her Eliot’s gone out for a run.

He doesn’t come back until late afternoon, but that night he follows her up to her room.

 

************************

 

Eliot makes her tea in the afternoons and she holds him in the early hours, whenever the other one needs it, and a couple of months slip by before she really notices. She’s not marking time in days, but in hospital visits and treatment plans and bills. 

They don’t really talk about it, but she sees Eliot checking his phone and wonders what messages he’s getting. Or not getting. She goes as far as asking her dad for Nate Ford’s number, but she doesn’t use it. Not yet.

 

************************

 

Her phone rings as she’s about to start the truck and head back home from a supply run. 

She pulls the phone out and sees it’s an unrecognized number.

“Hello?” she says. “Can I help you?”

“Is Eliot there?” a woman’s voice asks, sounding smaller than she remembers it.

“Parker?” she asks. “Am I right? Is this Parker?”

There’s a pause, as though the woman isn’t sure she should say.

“If it’s Parker, can I ask why you’re calling me? Eliot has a phone,” she says.

That’s probably given away that he’s around, but she hasn’t actually said it, and she’s pretty sure this is Parker, anyway, and not some random person after Eliot’s location. The tentative way the voice says Eliot’s name makes it personal.

“It’s me,” Parker says. “So, is he there? You don’t have to make him talk to me, if he still doesn’t want to. Sophie says we have to let him work through whatever’s wrong. But I want to know if he’s okay. I miss him.”

The last part is sad and quiet, and Aimee closes her eyes and lets her head drop back against the seat.

Her loyalty here is to Eliot, to an Eliot who hasn’t told his people where he is though he clearly misses them, even as he spends his nights in Aimee’s bed and his days doing his damnedest to look after her. She appreciates his help and his comfort, but she thinks he’s starting to look for ways to do more again. She wonders if one person to look after will ever be enough for Eliot Spencer. 

“Are you all okay?” she asks, stalling. “Why isn’t Eliot with you?”

“It…” Parker stops.

Aimee gives her time. She can at least give her that, although she’s not sure it makes her feel any less guilty for evading the question and fishing for answers of her own. 

“Eliot thinks he let us down, Sophie says,” Parker tells her after a while. “He didn’t. He’s only letting us down by going away and not talking to us and not telling us when he’s coming h- back. He’s supposed to be here. With us.”

She sounds fierce by the end, and Aimee grimaces. She still doesn’t have any details, but now she knows none of them wanted Eliot to go, none of them blame him for whatever happened. She’d guessed as much. Now she also has confirmation that they want him to come back. 

“But if I see him, I can tell him you’re all okay?” she asks. “Safe? Can I tell him that, Parker?”

The pause this time is shorter, but Parker sounds cautious when she speaks again, like whatever she says next might go directly to Eliot. Aimee is fairly sure that they both understand what’s going unsaid.

“Yeah. You can tell him we’re all good. Sophie’s trying to get Hardison to hack into some fashion designer’s notes and Nate’s out in the bar. Tell him I miss him. If you see him. Tell him we all miss him. We need someone to cook real food and tell Nate he’s being a bastard.”

And in some ways that last part might be more likely to get Eliot back to them, Aimee knows.

“I’ll tell him,” she says. “If I see him.”

There’s a knot churning in her stomach as she drives away.

**************************

Eliot refuses to call.

“They’re fine. You said they’re fine,” he says, his back to Aimee as he pours oil into a pan.

“I think they’ll be more fine if you call them,” she says, standing over the other side of the room with her hands in her pockets.

She’s not being defensive. Eliot just doesn’t like people in his way when he cooks.

“They’re tough,” he says. “They’re fine without me.”

He won’t say anything else about it, and she’s not sure how far she can push without him leaving here too. She ends up holding him at 3am that night, stroking her hand down his back in long, soothing arcs until he can breathe again.

*************************

She thinks he’ll hang up at first, but when she gives her name she hears Nathan Ford exhale.

“You’re calling about Eliot,” he says.

“Yeah,” she says. “That’s who I wanted to talk to you about, Mr Ford.”

“Nate,” he says. “Call me Nate. And what do you need to say to me about Eliot?”

“He’s, er, he’s here. With me.”

She wasn’t sure she was going to tell him, and she’s not going to insist Eliot leaves or that he lets them come to him, but she’s worried that continuing to avoid them is making things worse. She doesn’t know if the panic attacks at night are new, but they’ve gotten less frequent. He seems better, except when they come up and he insists they’re fine without him.

“And how is he?” Nate asks, and she isn’t sure what to make of his tone. “Is he all right? Having a nice vacation?”

“My dad’s sick,” she says, even though she didn’t mean to. “He’s helping me out around the place while my dad’s in hospital.”

If nothing else, it gives Eliot a reason to be at her place that isn’t keeping away from his team. His family. She kind of wants to punch Nate Ford in the face for making her justify...well, anything, and maybe because she’d told herself a long time ago she was done making excuses for Eliot. But she also recognizes the particular kind of resentment in Nate’s tone, knows it for what it really is. 

His voice is softer when he responds.

“I’m sorry to hear that. Is there anything we can do?”

“No,” she says. “No, I… Listen, I don’t know what happened to make Eliot walk away from you, but I need to know if there’s some reason I should be worried. That’s it.”

“Does he not seem all right to you?” Nate asks.

It’s a simple enough question, and she’s the one who called, but she feels like there’s more in it that she’s missing, just like she did every time this guy spoke when he was here.

“He’s Eliot,” she says, as though that’s an answer.

He seems to take it as one.

“Yeah. Listen, tell him we’ve had Mr. Quinn in on a few jobs, and a couple of other people have filled in on others. We’re coping. In fact, we might try the next job without a hitter. I think Parker’s mastered her taser, now.”

He doesn’t tell her much else, and she ends the call feeling less settled rather than more. She hopes Ford is under no illusion that he’s a subtle man. Eliot’s supposed to be here is as clear in his words as it was when Parker came right out and said it. 

She’s trying to decide if she has any right to an opinion on the matter one way or the other. She doesn’t know what promises Eliot has or hasn’t made them. She only knows that he stopped making her promises a long time ago and that, just as long ago, she gave up any right to ask for them. She thinks she knows where Eliot feels he belongs. 

*************************

“They’re gonna do what now?” Eliot snaps.

He’s paused, a handful of chopped herbs in his hand, scowling at the wall behind the stove.

“I just wanted to make sure they were all okay for you,” Aimee says. “Like you went down to the hospital about my dad last week.”

She’s almost sure she’s not meant to know about that, but a lot of the nurses like her and fuss over her when she goes in. They were very excited about her new ‘young man.’ 

Eliot waves that off.

“You know I care about Willie, and you. And they told me the same as they told you, anyway,” he says. He doesn’t make it clear how he got them to talk to him, and she doesn’t ask. “But, you called Nate? And he said they’re gonna go in without a hitter?”

“You know he was trying to get under your skin,” Aimee can’t help but point out. 

She may understand where Nate’s attitude was coming from, but that doesn’t mean it still didn’t rub her the wrong way. 

“Of course he was,” Eliot says. “It’s Nate. The question is what is he trying to achieve. That man’s plans have plans. He might think it’ll keep me here or God knows what.”

He drops the herbs in the pan and turns to the chopping board. Aimee listens to the snick of the knife on wood, and watches the play of muscles in his shoulders.

“You could just call them yourself and ask,” she says at last. “Or go back.”

“You tired of me?” he asks.

“No. No, that’s not it.”

She doesn’t know how to say that’s never the problem without saying more than she should or not saying enough and making the last few months seem like less than they were. The thing is, she’s always going to love Eliot and, given half a chance, she’s always going to fall in love with him again.

If she’s honest with herself, she already has. Hard to say how she could have avoided it, what with discovering all his new interests and knowledge, the parts he’s able to share, and seeing the parts that haven’t changed much at all, like how he is with the horses and with the people who work with her, and even with Anne’s kids when they come by. But if he wasn’t feeling the pull of somewhere else, he wouldn’t be so adamant about avoiding his people.

She doesn’t want to go back to lying on her own at night, even if, when, her dad gets home. She just isn’t sure she has any choice in the matter.

So she listens to him explain all the reasons he isn’t going to call, even though they’re all confusing and vague, and half of them are hand gestures, and tries to work out if there’s any other way for this to end.

***********************

Three days later, her dad tells her he’s coming home.

Eliot holds her as she cries that night, and strokes a hand through her hair as she rants at herself for crying over something good. She falls asleep at last with her head on his chest and as far as she knows he sleeps through the night too.

At any rate, he doesn’t wake her up.

**********************

Eliot cooks a meal for them all when her dad gets home, and it’s nowhere near any big holiday but it feels like one.

That night, he kisses her on the forehead and goes to the guest-room, and Aimee lets him.

In the morning, he comes down with his bags packed and shakes her dad’s hand before pulling her into a one-armed hug.

“It’s been good seeing you,” he says, and she tells herself she’s doing the right thing by letting him walk away. Tries not to be angry at herself or at anybody else. 

**********************

“He’s sad,” Parker says down the phone-line.

Aimee’s in the middle of going over some paperwork she’d really like to set on fire, but she pauses to listen.

“You mean Eliot,” she says, because Parker’s version of hello could do with some context. “How do you know?”

“He’s just…sad,” Parker says. “He doesn’t seem to be enjoying hitting people as much, even. Hardison says he probably misses you but doesn’t want to say it because he doesn’t think he can do anything about it.”

“So you’re saying it?” Aimee asks. Finding out Parker measures Eliot’s mood by how much he enjoys hitting people should probably phase her more than it does. 

“I don’t like him being sad,” Parker says.

“But you wanted him back,” Aimee says.

“He’s ours,” Parker tells her, as though it’s some fundamental theory of the universe. “He should be with us.”

Aimee closes her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose. Has Parker really called her of all people to work through this problem out loud? If Eliot can spend so much time around these people, he clearly does love them, and he’s developed a lot more patience over the years. Or maybe he just takes a lot of Excedrin. 

“He’s where he’s supposed to be,” she says, and tries to believe it. 

Parker doesn’t seem to need any reassurance about that part, but what else is there to say? She thinks if she and Parker have anything in common, it’s that they want Eliot to be happy. Just because he wasn’t miserable with her and he’s a little sad without her, it doesn’t mean he isn’t happier with Parker and the rest. She’s had a lot of years to come to terms with the idea that you can’t always have what you need and what you want. 

Parker hmms, and Aimee thinks maybe the call is over.

“He’s ours,” Parker says just as Aimee’s about to say goodbye and tell Parker that Eliot can always call her. “But I think he might be yours, too. We can share him.”

Aimee finds herself fighting a smile, even though she should tell Parker that you can’t just offer up another person like that. And even though she’s only half sure she understands what Parker means. 

She hasn’t drunk any tea since Eliot left, but once she’s done talking to Parker she gives up on the paperwork and goes to make herself a cup. She sits with it and thinks.

*********************

Portland is nice. Busy, but nice.

Aimee steps into the brewpub Parker gave her directions to and stops.

Eliot’s behind the bar, laughing and talking with a customer, and he looks good. His hair looks great. He doesn’t look sad.

She must stand there too long staring, because he looks up and catches sight of her. The smile drops.

Before she can decide this was a mistake or some bizarre practical joke, Parker appears at her elbow and pulls her along by the arm, right up to the bar.

“Get her some chili,” she tells Eliot, and pats Aimee on the arm. “I’ll go tell Hardison you’re here.”

She stares after Parker until she hears Eliot’s quiet chuckle. When she looks back at him, he’s smiling, even if it only just reaches his eyes.

“She can get you that way,” he says, leaning in as though imparting a secret.

“Yeah...,” Aimee says. “It’s not a problem, me being here? I thought about calling, but you hadn’t called me, and, well…”

“We never were too good at communicating,” Eliot says, the smile slipping away.

“I don’t know,” Aimee says, because this is one of the things she’s been thinking about. “I’d say we did pretty good sometimes.”

She’s remembering holding him at night, and him sitting with her at her kitchen table, and she realizes she isn’t ready to give that up. No, she doesn’t need him. She can get by. She always has, and her dad’s back home, healthy again.

Thing is, maybe there’s the means to find a middle ground now, between need and want. She wants that connection that’s never quite been the same with anybody else. She wants Eliot. Maybe they can finally find a compromise where they can have each other without one of them giving up everything else.

She wouldn’t mind looking forward to the great sex when they could manage it, either. Or the great cooking. No point in lying to herself when she’s already about to go for broke.

“Yeah, well,” Eliot says, and stops when she reaches over and takes one of his hands. “Aimee...”

“Wouldn’t have to be full-time,” she says. “I like what I’ve seen of Portland so far, and you can visit me between jobs. If you want.” 

She sees on his face that he wants that, in some way, but his eyes flicker sideways and she looks around to find Hardison at the edge of the room, talking to the dark-haired woman she knows is Sophie. They both look over and wave, and Eliot squeezes her hand.

“It’s not the life for you, Aimee,” he says.

“And I don’t mean for it to be,” she says. “Not like you mean. Just like I’m not saying you should give this up. You weren’t happy without them.”

He opens his mouth and she holds up her free hand.

“I could tell. Just like Parker can tell now.”

His eyes widen at that, and she goes on before he can derail this by shouting at Parker.

“If you don’t want to try, you just have to say it,” she tells him, “but I came up here to see if we could find some way not to leave it years before the next time we see each other and maybe without some kind of desperate situation.” 

There, that’s a better example of spoken communication. Has to be.

His focus snaps back to her so fast she almost feels winded.

“You want that? To find a way?” he asks, even though she’s just said exactly that.

“Yes,” she says. “Yes, I do. I…I appreciated what you did for me these last few months, and, well, I miss you.” No, that’s not right. She went over so many ways to say this on the plane and none of them were that. She takes a deep breath and says, “I always miss you. Might be nice to only have to do that some of time.” 

His grip on her hand tightens and she’s pretty sure what she’s reading on his face isn’t bad, but he’s not saying anything either. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Hardison leave Sophie and head towards them, and she leans over the bar so her mouth is closer to Eliot’s ear.

“And I miss having my way with you.”

“What are you two talking about?” Hardison asks, arriving as she pulls back. 

She’s managed to shock a laugh out of Eliot.

Eliot shakes his head, runs a hand through his hair, and keeps smiling.

“Nothing you need to know about,” he says, and he threads his fingers through Aimee’s properly. “Go find Parker and tell her I owe her.”

**Author's Note:**

> Do let me know what you think Parker would ask for as a thank-you.


End file.
